Orcmid's Lair |
||||
|
2003-09-06XML- The Benefits. Well, I have concluded that this information is very superficial. Also, it relies on some amazing off-hand statements about the advantages of XML: "Standardized - Many products from many vendors are available that implement something close to the World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation on XML. Simple - the technology is easy to learn and implement, with many tutorials and 'how to' books available. Self-describing - straightforward data exchange applications can be written without reference to detailed format descriptions or schemas" If you read "self-describing" carefully, you will realize it means self-evident to a person. And informal agreements based on thinking we know the nature of content from the name of an element tag, given nothing else, is a strong reliance on happenstance. I would assume that people relying on this in real-world situations are finding it as necessary to tune up the old data dictionary system as ever. Computing MilieuTrust and Trustworthy ComputingKilroy Cookies and Dangers of Needlessly-Shared ServicesI had an interesting experience over the last two days. Starting Thursday night, 2003-09-04 around 21:45 -0700 (pdt), I was being authenticated into a Blogger that was not mine. I was even able to post and publish to Adrienne's Blog. I have a diary of my adventure that may show up in the Risks Digest. Once realizing that accounts were vulnerable, I immediately locked down my blog and its archives. I can do that because the blog is published to my own hosted site. I also locked Blogger out from FTP access to the blog directory until I had everything sorted out. I then notified as many people as I could that something was going on. I will keep updating my diary, although the condition has disappeared after 12 hours or more of exposure. I have backed up my hosted blog site and I have reactivated publishing of my blog. You can tell when you are seeing fresh or replaced material, because it has Revision: 0 in the footer of the page. Others have current revision dates and revision numbers. I don't have more to say about that here, other than I will keep watching and seeing how it all sorts out. Information SystemsDocument-Centric ViewsXML and DatabasesThe theme for this week in my course studies, and also an important aspect of Situating XML and Situated Systems Architecture. Hmm, SSA. ...kuro5hin.org || What do you know about XML and Databases?. A funny article, but a nice rundown on some of the issues around databases. XML APIs for databases. This is a nicely comprehensive demonstration of the demonstration of the navigational relationship between XML and Databases. It shows how to exploit that with a SAX or a DOM surface to a database system. 2003-09-04DB2XML A tool for transforming relational databases into XML documents. This is the package that we will use to demonstrate some XML-SQL work this week. Here are links to all things DB2XML. XML and Databases. A good overview much like the lesson for this week of my Web Applications course. Some of the specific issues of database mapping of XML documents (to or from) are addressed, and there is more to look at in a further reading. XML- The Benefits. A very nice discussion from the folks at Software AG about the care required to use XML as an interchange format from one database system to another. Well, I went by too quickly. On second reading, I find this pretty awful. See the later comment. XML APIs for databases. Whoa, I just had a serious problem with Blogger. My Blog This! efforts were going to someone else's Blog. And the boys at Blogger don't make it easy to find the customer support form. I don't care that paying customers get priority, this is a nasty breach. I seem to be logged on properly now. I will have to keep watching. At least the Blog This! form is back to what I would expect of it. Now, what do I have to post all over again. Somebody named adrienne is going to be very surprised to see my posts on their blog, though it doesn't look like they are active. Wowza. Nasty, nasty, nasty. More reason to put up a local blogger and publish to my site myself or install a wiki with blogging capability. This intermediary stuff presents a mammoth single point of failure. OK, OK, XML APIs for databases. A nice demonstration that database navigation (including query results) tend to be navigational and are easily wrapped and navigated by mappings to SAX and to DOM. XML.com: Introduction to Native XML Databases. OK, this is about NXD and what the fuss is about around Native XML Databases. A great overview by Kimbro Staken on xml.com. More MiscellanyPosting it now just in case. Then I dip into materials that come up in regard to the current week of course assignments and other matters.Are You Missing Out on Code Generation?. Hmm, dealing with the complexity of EJB by automating code generation. Well, since Model-Driven schemes depend on it, something useful to look at. 2003-09-03Microsoft, users cope with worms' chaos - Computerworld. There was daily evidence of Microsoft's efforts to deal with Blaster and to support its user community in a daunting task. Whatever we have to say about how our systems got in the state they are in, it is important, always, to look at how problems are dealt with and how the lesson is carried into the future. This article on the internal effort that was involved, and in how Microsoft is set up for emergency responses, is particularly informative. As geekie as the perspectives of Microsofties can be, as in IT and software-development everywhere, I don't think that Microsoft ever forgets the customer for very long. This article provides an appreciation for the scale at which Microsoft has to operate. Naturally, a technological fix is now to be explored. We'll see how that goes, and also how the culture change required for transparent trustworthiness moves ahead. SCO could face uphill battle in drawing new customers - Computerworld. Sometimes there is great value in having been around a while and seeing how some games play out. I remember when IBM were the bad guys and laugh when I see the indignation of IBM techies about Microsoft. Meanwhile, there is this little story about a software package called ARC and one called PKZIP. It turns out that ARC decided there was an intellectual property problem with PKZIP and sued PKware. ARC won its suit. But it didn't matter. Bulletin-board operators all turned away from the ARC format and used ZIP. Who ever hear of ARC, you say? Precisely. Why IT projects fail - Computerworld. This is a great article. First the distinction between failure and risk is useful although I think one should identify the failure conditions as part of on-going risk assessment. The other aspect is about biting the bullet and putting a failed project out of its misery before it consumes any more opportunity cost than it already has. Sue Young also has some interesting thoughts about fear in the workplace. 2003-09-02jEdit - Plugin Central - HTML and XML. The current set of plug-ins related to HTML and XML. They work very nicely. Yes they do. jEdit Community :: Resources for users of the jEdit text editor. I was sent her by a startup Tip. This particularly impressive as a Wiki site as much as anything else. I like the ability to put comments on articles and to have these nice front-page announcements. In fact, there is a *lot* to like about this site. I wonder when I should update to 4.2. 2003-09-01MiscellanyPosting it now just in case. I find that sometimes archiving doesn't work well enough when I don't publish regularly. Also, the publish button has vanished. What I want to do is republish some disappeared archive pages. We'll start just by posting here right now.Abstract Service for Mathematical Logic at the Institute for Logic at the University of Vienna. Another resource to go with the one just listed.
|
|||
